America’s railroads were once the envy of the world and the engine of its industrial age. But that hasn’t been the case for more than half a century. Brightline, founded in 2012, wanted to change all that. Florida’s private railroad company ran yellow trains at near high speed between Miami and Orlando. It has big plans to launch another line with 200 mph true high-speed trains making the 200-mile trip between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga, California, outside Los Angeles. He then filed for bankruptcy last month after not making enough money to cover his debts. But the railroad still operates service in Florida and is moving forward with plans for true high-speed trains between Las Vegas and Southern California. High-speed passenger rail is common around the world, from major countries such as Japan, France and China, to emerging economies such as Morocco. The United States is a glaring exception, as there are no passenger trains that meet the global definition of high speed, or that run at least 150 mph for long journeys. That’s partly cultural: America is a country of cars. But the main reason high-speed rail hasn’t existed in the United States is a lack of government resources, according to prominent high-speed rail advocate Lou Thompson. Foreign governments “wanted high-speed trains and were willing to pay for them,” Thompson, who was involved in the formation of Amtrak in the early 1970s and served as a railroad adviser to the World Bank, told CNN. “Our government has never met those two conditions.” All of that government support went toward the country’s interstate highways and air traffic system. This is partly due to public need: the United States needed reliable ways to transport people and goods across a rapidly growing country after World War II. But it’s also due in part to the powerful business forces behind highways and airlines: the automotive, oil and construction industries in the case of highways, and airlines and aerospace companies when it comes to air travel. Lobbying from these industries essentially pushed high-speed rail “on the back burner to continue funding highways and aviation,” said Andy Kunz, executive director of the advocacy group US High Speed Rail. There is also the problem of geography. The United States is large and its major cities are further apart than many countries with high-speed rail. “Once you get over 400 miles (between destinations), high-speed rail starts to lose ground because then the air gets faster (in the United States),” Thompson said. “It’s amazing how far you can go in Europe in 400 miles. Most major cities are within that distance. That’s true in Japan, too.” Furthermore, when there is no infrastructure built between major cities, it is difficult to generate the number of passengers necessary to sustain high-speed rail service. In Japan, for example, hundreds of millions of people travel on high-speed trains every year. Expected peak demand for California is about 30 or 35 million, Thompson said. Amtrak’s Acela rail service between Washington and Boston carries 12 million people a year, he said. “When there are hundreds of millions of people a year or billions of people a year, then the economic change is quite significant,” he said. There are a few options for faster rail service in the United States. Amtrak’s NextGen Acela train, which began service a month ago, can reach 160 mph. Even in bankruptcy, Brightline still operates the Orlando and Miami line that reaches top speeds of 125 mph. But both have limits. The Acela can only reach that speed in short bursts. Brightline only reaches its maximum speed during a 38-mile stretch near Orlando. Brightline hoped for more government support for its construction in Florida and its western line, as well as more passengers in Florida. Its quarterly reports show it carried 1.8 million passengers in the second quarter, up 16% from a year earlier. Despite the lack of success of high-speed rail in the US in the past, he believes it can still be a successful business in the future, stating that, operationally, it was already making money for a few months. The company has gone on record that its bankruptcy filing should help it move forward with its plans by getting rid of some of its debt. And he says no tax money will be lost because of the filing. Meanwhile, a publicly funded US high-speed rail project to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco is years behind schedule and billions over budget. The project has “hit a dead end,” said Thompson, who was part of a peer review group that oversaw the project for the California lawmaker. Kunz said he is still hopeful about the future of high-speed rail in the country. If a project like Brightline’s Los Angeles to Las Vegas line opens, he believes it will increase demand for the service elsewhere. Private investment alone is not the answer, Thompson said, adding that it is unrealistic to think that high-speed rail can be built and operated without some significant form of government support. “The value of high-speed rail is partly for the people who use it… but it’s also partly social things like reduced pollution, reduced noise, increased safety or better use of land,” he said. “There are many other public benefits that the passenger will not and should not pay for.”
